What to Expect From a Neck Lift

 
A Neck Lift is a set of procedures to enhance the appearance of your neck. Procedures can include:

  • Removing excess skin
  • Removing or altering neck muscles
  • Liposuction to remove excess fat
  • Botox injections to address problems with fullness or “bands”

doctor checking patient
Know Your Goals
You must be in good health to get a neck lift. You’ll consult with your surgeon in advance. For that meeting, have your goals in mind for what you want to change.
Here are some of the most common concerns that are addressed with a neck lift:

  • Turkey wattle neck
  • Excess fat
  • Too much skin

Your Consultation
During your consultation, you should go over your goals and learn about the options:

  • Turkey Wattle: Your surgeon may recommend surgery, which involves making cuts under your chin or behind your ears or both to access a neck muscle called the platysma. Sometimes, that may even mean removing some muscle. Instead of surgery or in addition to it, Botox injections can relax parts of the platysma that are responsible for the “band” appearance or look of fullness.
  • Liposuction:  During liposuction, your surgeon will make a small cut below your chin and remove excess fat. If you are also getting other procedures, it is very common for cosmetic surgeons to begin with liposuction. You will be able to determine this with your doctor during your consultation.
  • Too Much Skin on Your Neck: Your surgeon will trim parts of the skin and lift it into place, securing it with tissue glue or stitches.

 

This Information is brought to you courtesy of Dr. Bishara and The Paragon Plastic Surgery & Med Spa


There are seasons for everything, but one thing you wouldn’t expect to be seasonal is cosmetic surgery. Any plastic surgeon, however, will tell you that the spring is the season for breast augmentations and liposuction, and the season for facelifts is right after Christmas. And many other procedures are more common during certain times of the year.

The reasons for this seasonality become obvious when you consider each procedure. During the spring, women start thinking about that dreaded bathing suit. They try them on and might notice a little fat that wasn’t there last year, or they might wish they filled it out better in certain areas. Since it takes a month or so to look reasonable in a bathing suit after cosmetic surgery, by July 4, if the surgery hasn’t been performed yet, many women wait until after the summer. 
When it comes to facial surgery, like face or eyelid lifts, fall or winter surgery is most common. While you should be able to face the public two weeks after a facelift, you might not really want to. You’ll have residual swelling and even a little bruising up to a month after the lift, and there’s always a chance of some odd lumps and bumps. It’s a lot easier to wear scarves or heavier makeup when it’s cold outside. When planning for cosmetic surgery, you might be pleasantly surprised at how fast you recover, but 5-10% of people have one thing or another that slows down their recovery. When planning out your schedule, you really have to plan for the worst-case scenario.
Recovery from larger procedures takes longer than recovery from smaller procedures. And older women take longer to bounce back than younger ones. And, of course, if you have significant medical problems, you have a much higher chance of a complication after surgery; you and your surgeon may decide to forgo surgery and improve your appearance with less invasive procedures that are less demanding on your body.
While some office procedures like Botox, Xeomin and Fillers, are easier to do and really don’t have seasonality, not all types of procedures are suited for the summer. Chemical peels and some laser treatments require strict avoidance of sun, so unless you live in a cave or are a vampire, you might consider having these treatments during the fall-winter months.

This Information is brought to you courtesy of Dr. Mark Bishara and The Paragon Plastic Surgery & Med Spa in Mansfield and Southlake, TX
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a recent article in the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS discusses how women like how their selfies look using filters, and then head to their doctors to help create what they see.

 
You is the new you. Years ago, people seeking cosmetic surgery would bring pictures of celebrities to their doctor — and ask for “Angelina Jolie’s lips,” “Kate Beckinsale’s nose” or “Kim Kardashian’s butt.”
But now people bring their selfies — filtered through Instagram.
“This is a huge trend,” says Upper East Side surgeon Dr. Elie Levine. “People are bringing in pictures of themselves taken at a favorite angle or filtered, and saying they want to look like that.”
Anyone can nowadays, thanks to Photoshop — which even Beyoncé uses to always look her best in pictures.
But real life requires real solutions, and that’s where the Instagram-aided knife comes in.
Central Jersey mom Geri Hubner says she became obsessed with her growing wattle after staring at photos from her daughter’s wedding. She started using photo filters but then came to the ultimate real-world conclusion:
“I wanted to look like that all the time,” says Hubner, 56.
So she called facial plastic surgeon Dr. Andrew Miller in Edison, showed him the Instagrammed pictures and sprung for a neck lift, which can run $10,000 to $20,000.
“He’s an artist. I should have done this years ago,” says Hubner, who says the surgery and week-long recovery were relatively painless.
Queens resident Nancy Chacon, 32, also showed her best face on Instagram, using “either the Inkwell or Sutro filters, or the sepia tones, to hide blemishes.”
It worked — too well, she admits: “I decided I wanted people to see that person in person.”
So she got some laser treatments and broadband light photofacial therapy at Levine’s Manhattan clinic. It cost about $1,000, but her complexion is in the clear.
“So many people asked, ‘What are you doing to your face? You look so young!’ ” she says. “It was worth it.”
Huber also got Botox, for about $300, and injections of Juvederm, which runs about $1,000 per syringe. The result is smoother and fuller skin.
“I now have cheekbones,” she says. “It’s put a real skip in my step.”
These women aren’t alone: The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery says there’s been a 33% bump in procedures driven by self-awareness from social media since 2013.
Midtown plastic surgeon Dr. David Shafer has clients pleading for a “social-media makeover” every day.
“They whip out their cellphones and start flipping through their pictures, saying, ‘I want to look like this all the time,’ ” he says.
Doctors can respond with an arsenal of minimally invasive, lunch-break treatments for under $1,000. The changes are big, but friends and family often don’t know that any work was done.
“I only tell my closest, tightest girlfriends that I’m doing this. Everyone else thinks I just look really well-rested,” says Janet Ross, 47, from San Francisco, who relied on the Amaro filter to soften her selfies before Dr. Jonathan Kaplan used Belotero fillers to reduce the lines around her eyes and mouth.
“I don’t want to look like one of the ‘Real Housewives,’ ” she says. “I just want to look like myself, but better.”

INSTAGRAM 101

The boom in Instagram-fueled cosmetic surgery may sound shallow, but it’s a step in the right direction for an industry where too much work can leave clients looking grotesque.
“Clients are not trying to look like a whole different person anymore,” says Dr. Andrew Miller, who is based in Edison, N.J. “We always stress taking what you have naturally and making it better. Otherwise, people can look really weird, with lips that are too big, a jawline that’s unreal.”
As a first step, here are some ways to tweak your selfies before contemplating surgery:
Soft, warm Instagram filters such as Rise and Toaster deemphasize pores and imperfections by highlighting your skin.
Black-and-white filters are universally flattering. They eliminating red or ruddy complexions and automatically make ho-hum classy.
Blur imperfections with the softer Willow filter, or go bold with the high-contrast Inkwell.
The duck face works: Purse your lips and shoot down from a higher angle to highlight cheekbones, conceal double-chins and emphasize your eyes.
Before you snap the shutter, shake up your hair by doing a quick punk rock head-bang, or ruffle your fingers through it to give limp strands a quick boost.
 
This Article Brought to you Courtesy of Dr. Mark Bishara and The Paragon Plastic Surgery & Med Spa in Mansfield & Southlake, TX

 
 

PLASTIC SURGERY & AESTHETIC MEDICINE- FDA Approves First Dermal Filler to Treat Acne Scarring
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the first dermal filler to treat pitted scarring of the cheek caused by acne, the most common skin disorder in the United States afflicting 40-50 million people.
Bellafill, developed by privately held Suneva Medical Inc, is made primarily of bovine collagen. When injected, it is designed to lift and smoothen scars to the level of the surrounding skin, in patients over the age of 21.
A cure for acne has long eluded drug developers. And despite treatments ranging from topical gels to lasers, nothing so far has satisfactorily treated scarring that affects up to 95 percent of acne sufferers.
A study testing Bellafill against a placebo in 150 acne patients showed a significant improvement in those receiving Suneva’s treatment that continued for up to a year, Suneva said on Tuesday.
“Until now, multiple laser treatments or other injectables have been used but are limited both in terms of efficacy and longevity and are hampered by potential side effects.
Approved in 2006 to smoothen “smile lines”, demand for Bellafill has grown more that 30 percent a year for the last several years, Suneva CEO Nicholas Teti said in an interview.
Pricing of the acne treatment is likely to be similar to that of the wrinkle treatment. Dosages would depend on the severity of the scarring.
San Diego-based Suneva, which was formed in 2009 out of the assets of Artes Medical, a publicly traded company that filed for bankruptcy the previous year, plans to launch Bellafill for scarring toward the end of January.
Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Aaron Gal, who covers Botox-maker Allergan Inc, termed Bellafill a “niche” product.
For these reasons, he said it was unlikely Bellafill would become “a big drug” such as Allergan’s Juvederm and Valeant Pharmaceutical International Inc’s Restylane.
Both are based on hyaluronic acid, a substance occurring naturally in the body but not approved to treat acne scarring.
This News Brought to you courtesy of Dr. Mark Bishara and The Paragon Plastic Surgery & Med Spa

A recent article in Bloomberg Business discusses how people who suffer from an unsightly double chin may not need to contort their head, neck and face into funny positions to try to work off the extra roll if U.S. regulators sign off on a new drug.
Kythera Biopharmaceuticals Inc.’s experimental drug is injected into fat under the chin. The drug is a version of deoxycholic acid, a molecule that occurs naturally in the body to help destroy fat.

Kythera Biopharmaceuticals Inc. aims to bring true, rigorous clinical science to cosmetic dermatology with prescription drugs that modulate novel biological pathways in aesthetic and restorative indications.

The injection is still not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A panel of outside advisors and academics will discuss whether the FDA should approve the first-of-its-kind treatment on March 9. The agency doesn’t have to follow the panel’s recommendation.
Kythera, based in Westlake Village, California, says the drug, ATX-101, contours the chin without affecting surrounding tissue. Injectable drugs like Allergan Inc.’s Botox and dermal fillers aren’t approved to fix fat and loose skin under the chin, making ATX-101 potentially the first injection for the area to hit the market if approved.

ATX-101, is an adipolytic agent discovered at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center (LA Biomed) and identified by Munshi. Adipolytic therapy, dissolving fat by injection, has been used for several decades, primarily outside of the US, but the products used are unregulated; thus there has been no real understanding of their mechanism of action.

Chin augmentations were the fastest-growing category of plastic surgery in the U.S. in 2011, according to an analysis by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. There were 20,680 chin procedures in 2011, and they grew more than breast augmentation, Botox and liposuction treatments combined, according to the society.
The FDA is scheduled to rule on the drug by May 13. It would be Kythera’s first product for sale, and could generate $505 million in sales in 2020, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The drug has been tested on 1,600 patients in clinical trials, more than 90 percent of whom maintained a meaningful reduction of fat after two years, Kythera said on its website.